The Fence Sitter Paradox

[Hagoth]

"Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life..." So says the essay, but we all know that right up through the civil rights movement, from Brigham Young to Joseph Fielding Smith, Delbert Stapley, Ezra Taft Benson, Mark E. Petersen and many others, church leaders openly taught that people with dark skin were born that way to mark them as either pre-mortal sinners or fence sitters in the war in heaven.

BUT

White people are a minority on this planet, and until recently infant and child mortality was very high (something like 50%), so most people who have ever lived died before the age of 8 which, according to our doctrine, excludes them from the need for baptism and guarantees their salvation in the Celestial Kingdom.

You see where this is going. Most people ever born on earth were explicitly marked by God as fence sitters in the preexistence BUT they are nonetheless guaranteed a throne in the celestial kingdom simply because they died young. Now if you consider how many Mormons there are and how many of those actually meet all of the criteria that the church today teaches us is essential for admission into the CK, we see that the very few actual Latter-Day Saints who make the cut will find themselves a tiny minority among a vast throng of not-so-white-and-delightsome infant and toddler gods (if Joseph was correct on that score) who shouldn't have even been there in the first place because they were intentionally marked at birth by God himself as cosmic slackers.

Eternal third-world preschool ruled by undelightsome usurper babies wielding the powers of gods.

Of course the church posthumously and selectively disavows the teachings of its prophets and apostles about all of this not-essential-to-your-salvation (as long as you're white) stuff, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth ponderizing from time to time, just to keep an eye on the WQ (wacky quotient).

[Corsair]

Your demographic analysis has other implications. We have the rhetoric around the idea that the LDS church will fill the whole earth. But the LDS church is a mere 0.2% of humanity at this point. The overwhelming majority of ordinances and conversions will be accomplished through proxy ordinances in the temple.

[Mormorrisey]

The overwhelming majority of ordinances and conversions will be accomplished through proxy ordinances in the temple.

This is actually hell to me. If the millennium is an endless series of church meetings and temple visits (the latter was confirmed by Elder Ballard recently, that temples will be open through the millennium) then count me out. Nothing I'd rather miss.

[Thoughtful]

The overwhelming majority of ordinances and conversions will be accomplished through proxy ordinances in the temple.

This is actually hell to me. If the millennium is an endless series of church meetings and temple visits (the latter was confirmed by Elder Ballard recently, that temples will be open through the millennium) then count me out. Nothing I'd rather miss.

This came up in SS today, whether we would have jobs or just temple work to do.

I'm surprised no one worries about giving up meat & BBQs... the things we choose to fixate on...

[redjay]

[/quote]

This is actually hell to me. If the millennium is an endless series of church meetings and temple visits (the latter was confirmed by Elder Ballard recently, that temples will be open through the millennium) then count me out. Nothing I'd rather miss.
[/quote]

Ditto

Even as a TBM Mrs RJ was informed I wasn't going on a proselyting mission when I retire (done that -and it wasn't all it was cracked up to be: fool me once..., and I super sure as hell wasn't going to be shuffling round the temple - boring, pious and weird.

[wtfluff]

"Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life..." So says the essay, but we all know that right up through the civil rights movement, from Brigham Young to Joseph Fielding Smith, Delbert Stapley, Ezra Taft Benson, Mark E. Petersen and many others, church leaders openly taught that people with dark skin were born that way to mark them as either pre-mortal sinners or fence sitters in the war in heaven.

BUT

...

The "Most Correct Book on Earth" still teaches that dark skin is a curse... Has "the church" disavowed that yet?

[Hagoth]

The "Most Correct Book on Earth" still teaches that dark skin is a curse... Has "the church" disavowed that yet?

The proverbial rock and hard place. It's interesting to watch the apologists try to wriggle around it. (i.e. skin of blackness refers to spiritual countenance rather than skin color, or God is not racist, but the Nephite authors were)

[Emower]

The "Most Correct Book on Earth" still teaches that dark skin is a curse... Has "the church" disavowed that yet?

The proverbial rock and hard place. It's interesting to watch the apologists try to wriggle around it. (i.e. skin of blackness refers to spiritual countenance rather than skin color, or God is not racist, but the Nephite authors were)

It's a pipe dream, but a dream nonetheless that the church would try to phase that out of the scriptures like they have some of the other racist stuff. Pointing out edits made in the past seem to go nowhere with TBM's, but something that happened right under their nose? Maybe...

[Hagoth]

I think they would just shrug it off as a fixed scribal error and say, "I'm glad we have modern prophets to take things like that off our shelves."

[wtfluff]

The "Most Correct Book on Earth" still teaches that dark skin is a curse... Has "the church" disavowed that yet?

The proverbial rock and hard place. It's interesting to watch the apologists try to wriggle around it. (i.e. skin of blackness refers to spiritual countenance rather than skin color, or God is not racist, but the Nephite authors were)

Ah yes; The re-definition of common words so is dumb normal folk can understand what mormon god really meant. (In the real world, I believe they call that gaslighting...)